Un-Judge call: I cast More Or Less on Krark's Other Thumb to instead roll three dice and ignore one. Do I get to use both results, potentially activating two triggers, or is it implied that I add them together?

You would add them together. You can only get one result.

Regarding dice rolling: there's also Luck Bobblehead.

Yep.

Whats the most recent ‘big if’ thats come to fruition? is it still dice rolling in black border?

Probably. We don’t hit a lot of big if’s.

Hello! Saturday, 18 May is my birthday and I'm requesting a(n early) spot of birthday trivia about any Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, please. It could be about a card from CLB or AFR, or something on the D&D side like the Strixhaven sourcebook. Many thanks!

This is the first Dungeons & Dragons themed Magic card we made. It was designed for Unstable, but first appeared in a special box at Hascon. When I designed the card, it rolled three six-sided dice, but the D&D team asked if we could change it to a twenty-sided die as that was more iconic for D&D.Happy Birthday!

hi mark! i have an un-rules question for a deck i'm brewing: the faq for The Big Idea says the extra dice it rolls are seen as separate from the original, but what about the results? say i use it to get +1d6 to a roll and i roll a 4 and a 6, for cards like Mr House, would that count as two results, or one result of 10? thanks!

One result. It’s adapting the roll, not increasing the number of rolls.

I know there's been discussion around cards like "Krark's Other Thumb" being considered black-border playable, do you think "As Luck Would Have It" could also be in that same group? It doesn't seem that crazy, when cards like "Vexxing Puzzlebox" and "Helix Pinnacle" exist.

My biggest worry was As Luck Would Have It was designed around six-sided dice, not twenty-sided dice.

With dicerolling becoming something we do in mainline or not unset magic, could Krarks other thumb be erratad to be legal? If not that, something similar to it that I can play in my dice rolling deck?

Some day, I hope to make it such that you can either play Krark’s Other Thumb or an equivalent card in eternal formats.

Will OTJ have any dice rolling or gambling type mechanics? I am really enjoying building a flavorful deck with Mr House and dice rolls.

There is no die rolling in Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

"I talk a lot about how different players enjoy different aspects of the game. What I talk far less about is different players struggle with different aspects. Some can’t handle excessive processing; some have issues with sequencing; some don’t understand the nuances of the rules; some aren’t good with memory..."

Hi Mark,

I wanted to say I sincerely appreciate the thoughtful, high effort and detailed response to my question and feedback. It really means a lot and sometimes I can't believe I'm talking to the head designer of my favorite game of all time about the specific questions and issues I have with the game. You don't have to do this and it's so amazing that you do, so thank you.

I think you make an interesting and probably valid point about my proclivity to value memorizing aspects of the game and mechanics and I understand other people don't have that problem or don't care about that as much.

But I think overall, in summary my larger point is for more than 25 years, typically the rule of thumb when it came to Magic the Gathering cards was the adage “Reading the card explains the card” and in just the past few years, that is no longer the case because of the need to have extremely wordy mechanics that need helper/reminder cards to function.

People (myself included) often can't remember how these mechanics function, but because they are so complicated, they are constantly referring to the double sided helper token in addition the the card with oracle text and this can slow down game play and feel awkward at times.

I want the Magic the Gathering cards to also be the game pieces. With every new set you continue to prove this is possible in the form of brand new mechanics but Magic still insists on making more and more of these mechanics that deviate from that adage. But I acknowledge and respect that everyone doesn't agree with me on that.

Part of it is about memory and mental bandwidth, but a larger part of it is about tracking and the logistics of needing game pieces that aren't Magic cards in order to play Magic. This was also a big part of my aversion to cards that require stickers, 12 sided dice, keyword counters, helper tokens, etc.

I do look forward to someday seeing some more outside of the game helper token style mechanics that are more simple like Ascend or Monarch, so I will be crossing my fingers for those.

Anyways, thanks again for all you do for the community and keep up the great work!

Thank you for the dialogue. One of the interesting things about doing this job so long is that I get some perspective on larger shifts of the game. The conversation you and I are having matches a conversation I had with another player fifteen or so years ago. Magic was starting to dip its toe much more into counters and tokens. The player felt like the core of Magic was the cards, and that a reliance on counters and tokens was pulling away from the essence of what they thought was the core of Magic.Cut back another fifteen or so years before that. I had just joined Wizards and I was talking to a player at a convention. They were concerned that we’d been going up in named keywords. They felt the core of the game was based on the individual cards and that leaning on named mechanics was adding an element that distracted from the pure essence of the game. Magic, by its nature, constantly adapts. The designers are always looking for new venues to explore, but there are always players who appreciate the game for what it has been. That’s the balance that we’re always trying to strike. How do we keep exploring and innovating while at the same time keep true to what the game means to people? It’s challenging as those two forces can pull in very different directions. I do hear what you’re saying, and we’re always on the look for elegance and brevity where we can find it. Sometimes though that journey requires us to explore a bit into the weeds to learn things that with time and experience we can streamline. Again, thanks for the dialogue. I enjoy having chats like this with players.

If I pay infinite into ol buzzbark with as luck would have it on the field do I instantly win?

You still have to roll the dice.